Facebook to Deliver Social Media for The New York Times and Others

Have you heard the news that Facebook is working with The New York Times and other media outlets like BuzzFeed and National Geographic on a program to post the content from these media sources directly on the social media network? The program would give these print media masters a share of the social media audience while allowing Facebook to share in their advertising revenue. The social network plans to start testing this service in the next few months, but CNet.com offered the scoop on this news development.

Spreading the News Socially
This service would give greater exposure to news companies by giving their content a social media platform, yet it wouldn’t detract from their own digital sites because their content would still be featured on their own online sites. Still, posting print content on Facebook would signal a major shift in the way that news is reached and read.

Up until this moment, the only way to socially share news content from major publishers has been for Facebook users to post a link to an article in their feeds. But if this service goes into effect, all of this news content will be accessible on the social media site. It will prevent the need to post those links, as well as prevent users from leaving the site.

Reaching More Readers and Revenue
Facebook has a huge following, with 890 million daily active users and 1.4 billion monthly active users. Given this massive reach, news publications could greatly expand their exposure and earn new fans and followers. And when a story goes viral on Facebook, the overabundance of viewers can cause the site’s server to overload, which would send major traffic to these major news sites. And generating more traffic would let news sites earn more ad revenue.

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Speaking of that revenue, Facebook expects to have a share of the ad action and is working on a way to share in the ad revenue earned from the news content. The current plan is for stories to have ads running in tandem with content and for Facebook to have a fair share of the revenue from the content.

Giving News a New Life
Facebook’s vision is simple. It’s to make the network an accessible source for all of these news stories. The company hopes to come up with a streamlined process that will let news outlets simply syndicate their content on the site any way they want.

Facebook knows that most of its users have an interest in their news, just as news outlets know that most of its readers have an interest Facebook. Together, they could give audiences a brand-new view of news, while serving the best interests of all parties involved.